Just Like That | Colonial clubs and the fetish about dress codes

Our British rulers set up a chain of clubs for themselves, and for long, they were for “whites only”. When they left, Indians were admitted, but mostly “brown sahibs”, who were, as Macaulay had prophetically predicted, Indian only in colour. This class of anglicised, English-speaking Indians was also the new power elite — members of the civil services, senior police and Army officials, the old rich, and some leading corporate figures.

Thus, nothing really changed in these exclusionist bastions. In Kolkata, the Bengal Club where Macaulay once lived, opened its doors to Indians only in 1959, more than a decade after Independence, and an Indian did not displace a Britisher as the president of the club until another seven years after that! In Mumbai, another leading club kept this notice outside its premises for many years after 1947: DOGS AND INDIANS NOT ALLOWED.

Such clubs have, therefore, become today the symbols of a cultural confrontation, between a new, less anglicised and more egalitarian India, and the colonial traditions of the past. The Delhi Gymkhana Club, founded in 1913, occupies 27.3 acres of prime land in Lutyens Delhi. But in 1991, when I went to the club, wearing a silk kurta, starched pyjamas, expensive buttons, and Peshawari sandals, I was asked by the burly doorman who had known me since childhood, to wear a Jawahar jacket as well. I agreed until I saw that people in jeans and T-shirts were allowed in, while I, dressed in formal attire in my own cultural traditions, could not. I protested strongly, and fortunately, the then president, Admiral Tahliani, revised the rules.

But old habits die hard. In 2013, the same club stopped a high-ranking Bhutanese monk from entering because of his traditional dress. The Delhi Golf Club, another elite citadel, had a shameful incident in 2017 when a Khasi lady from Meghalaya, Taiin Lyngdoh, invited there for lunch, was asked by club officials to leave because she was dressed in the jainsem, her state’s formal attire. Apparently, the officials told her that it looked like a “maid’s dress”. The incident created public outrage, but colonial mentalities persist, and little attempt has been made to accommodate India’s vast formal sartorial diversity. For instance, the popular Tollygunge Club in Kolkata, founded in 1855, and occupying 110 acres of prime land, does not allow a formally clad pyjama-kurta guest or member in any venue of the club but permits all varieties of T-shirts and jeans. Nor would it allow in former minister P Chidambaram, if he was wearing his elegant veshti and shirt.

I am a member of most of these clubs, and my criticism comes from an insider as cautionary advice on the need to change, especially since most of the members of the current ruling party, without an anglicised pedigree or felicity in English, would not qualify to become members, and quite understandably resent these remnants of cultural colonisation. The situation becomes worse because inbreeding breeds infighting. Allegations of financial irregularities between rival groups in the clubs swirl around, literally inviting the government to take over, as has happened with the Delhi Gymkhana Club.

Clubs are entitled to their autonomy, but not to their refusal to change. It is not coincidental that after the government takeover of Gymkhana, Om Pathak was appointed the administrator. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party national executive, he had applied for membership as far back as 1982 but never got it. Two of his decisions were to keep an open copy of the Bhagavad Gita in the library and have a performance of the Ramayana.

Pavan K Varma is author, diplomat, and former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha). The views expressed are personal